The Dentist Of Auschwitz (12 page)

One morning Marek wanted me to come along with him to the spring. I knew something was on his mind. We were hardly halfway there when he stopped. “Don’t tell anybody,” he cautioned. “I am going to escape from here.” It shouldn’t have surprised me. I knew he was extremely depressed. Those who were less affluent at home adapted to life in the camp better than he and others like him. For them the degradation was unbearably hard. Though I knew the risk he was taking, I could not and would not try to change his mind.

“Marek, watch out. Don’t get caught,” I warned.

He looked at me, and I saw his determination. He told me that as soon as he brought enough water to last Stasia through the day, he would make a run for it. At about two o’clock he peeked in the office window and waved good-bye to me. I went out, we shook hands for the last time, and I wished him good luck. Then I saw him slip over the hill. As he was the first one to flee from Steineck, I had no idea of the consequences of his action on the rest of us.

No one noticed that he had gone during the day, and by the time we left Brodzice, the guards could only report him missing in camp. The following morning Krusche asked who knew of Marek’s escape beforehand. He got silence in return. Then he threatened us all. “If anyone escapes again, you will all be responsible for it. For each one that escapes, I’ll hang ten of you,” he said. A few days later he claimed that Marek had been caught and executed, though it couldn’t be confirmed. I hoped that by some miracle he had made it back to his family and that Krusche had told us a lie.

The weather was deteriorating, and dusk nudged itself in earlier each day. All that remained of the once-burgeoning wheat and rye fields were short, dry, stubby roots. The cycle completed, they too withered and died. I remembered that after our potatoes were put in the cellar at home, we kids still found some under the bushes. We would then gather dry twigs and build a fire and bake them. Even Mama’s kitchen-cooked potatoes could not compete with our cookout.

Cold, drizzly weather had arrived. Most of our clothing was just layers of tatters, and our shoes had long since fallen apart. Just getting to work was a struggle. Some inmates made it through the day by sheer force of will. One day a fellow inmate collapsed from weakness. I was told that the foreman just left him there, because he didn’t want to disrupt the others’ work. When we finally brought him into the camp, no miracle could save him. On his skin feasted thousands of bugs. Paradoxically, I thought, their feast would end soon. He died before dawn. Scenes like this would become common. Many died soon afterward, but his death, the first one, was the most shocking.

Zosia said that when she described “her” discomforts to the doctor, he diagnosed a duodenal ulcer. She brought me belladonna, a powdery antacid, Papaverine pills, and a liquid acid-neutralizer. It is not a cure, the doctor told her, but it should make her discomfort more bearable. The antacid helped my heartburn, but the Papaverine seemed to dry my mouth.

The landscape was changing with the seasons. Trees were bare, and winds whirled around with fury. Though malnutrition and hard work had already taken its toll, the winter cold would be even more devastating. It was November 11, Poland’s independence day, when two of our inmates collapsed at work. No one could help them, and no one could even try. Their lives simply ended. This happened so often that we now carried stretchers to work with us all the time. A new term,
Mussulman,
was born, probably because of the ashen color of the faces of these inmates who were “on the way out.” Their eyes deep in the sockets reminded us of desert people. While no one could tell who would survive, the next victim could often be predicted. Yet everyone was sent out to work every day. The sick wobbled and staggered to make it to work, and some never came back alive.

As the tragedy of knowing we were on a path to disaster grew, our senses dulled, and indifference set in. The will to go on ran up against our painful helplessness. Nobody felt much bereavement at the sight of fellow inmates dying. Mayer Siskind, just twenty-seven, was next. What I once believed—that needing our work, they would keep us alive—was obviously not their plan. In six months, of the 167 who had come here from our village, more than twenty were dead. The Nazis soon found it necessary to replenish the dead in our camp with new slaves. A transport of a hundred Jews from Konin, a nearby town, was delivered to us. Although Konin was only eighty kilometers from Steineck, these arrivals had not known that Steineck existed. At first their fresh look and decent clothes set them apart, but after a few weeks they blended in with the rest.

Winter dropped its first load of snow, but nothing would deter Kommandant Krusche from sending everyone out to work. After New Year’s more Jews arrived, this time from Lodz. They told us a horrifying story about a village called Chelmno. The Nazis, they said, had a speedier method to kill Jews. They had vehicles that diverted the engine exhaust into the truck body. Under the guise of resettlement, the people were driven away and killed on the road. The bodies were taken to Chelmno, which boasted the largest crematorium in the area, with a capacity to burn five hundred bodies per day. Because this act was so outrageous and diabolical, Rumkowski, the elder of Lodz, inquired if it was done on higher orders or by local Nazi zealots. The answer from Berlin came that it was official policy and that many such places were soon to follow. Because Chelmno was only about sixty-five kilometers from Dobra, this news rekindled our worse fears about the ghetto and the well-being of my mother, Josek, and Pola.

On one gray raw day, returning from work, I saw an inverted
U
-shaped structure with large hooks standing in the reporting area. It was unmistakably a gallows. I turned pale. Having failed to have me worked to death, I thought, Krusche was now determined to make good on his threat. He was going to hang me. Once we were dismissed after roll call, I asked Chaim what the gallows meant. It surprised him too, he said, when he saw it being erected. That evening I could not take my mind off dying. When I finally fell asleep, I saw myself, hands tied behind me, being led to the gallows. I tried to run away, but wherever I turned, SS men were in my way, stopping me. Finally the nightmare ended when I woke up choking. This must have awakened my father as well, for he looked frightened. Each time I saw the heinous device, shivers went down my spine.

One time I came upon Moniek, whom I knew from Dobra. Although he was my age, he looked like an old man. His flesh looked bug-eaten, and his veins as if they were filled with water. When he buttoned his shirt, he could barely move his fingers. He was a Mussulman. I took him to the infirmary, where Goldstein asked him if he was sick. No one ever wanted to admit to being sick, fearing the worst. Work was the best recipe for staying alive. Since Moniek had no injury or discernible ailment, Goldstein couldn’t let him stay. Those were the rules, he said. Thus, without being sick, Moniek went to work and was later brought back on a stretcher. He died the following day. There was no one to mourn him, no one to say a prayer for his soul. Starvation happened to so many that it soon became our number one killer.

In observing a man’s manner of walking and seeing the color of his skin and lips, I could tell the onset of a Mussulman. As I later saw, other labor camps, while more pernicious and more destructive, had better sanitary facilities. Some even offered periodic clothes changes and shoes to inmates, and most had inmate doctors and even small infirmaries.

The winter of 1942 was a bitterly cold one. Except for the spruce and pine, every tree was bare. The roads were covered with snow; streams and lakes lay under layers of ice. At work, the earth had to be chopped before, in lumps, it was loaded onto the wheelbarrows. For the first time we heard about a camp called Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, we heard, the SS put older men, women, and children to death as soon as they were brought in. No normal brain could absorb this, and many of us were not even willing to listen. We insisted that the story couldn’t be true.

By the middle of March a rumor spread in camp that a hundred inmates were to be transferred out of Steineck, but no one knew where they would be sent. This should be our opportunity to get out of here, I thought. My father agreed. Chaim, usually well informed about things like these, didn’t know more than what was rumored. I asked him, if it should turn out to be true, if he would arrange for Papa and me to be on the list. He wasn’t sure what Krusche would say, but remembering well the Kommandant’s threat, he promised to try. In a few days it became official. On Saturday one hundred men were to leave Steineck. I just wanted to leave, wherever we went.

Stasia disagreed. “Bronek,” she warned me, “as long as you stay here, I will help you.”

Witczak, Basiak, and Kmiec were probably the reasons why Krusche had not strung me up on the gallows. The thought of leaving Zosia weighed heavily against my decision as well. I knew that if I were to leave Steineck I would lose her. When we met again, Zosia wore a flowered kerchief tied loosely around her neck. It flapped in the early spring breeze. Her eyes were the smoky color of a wintry sky. We sat on a moss-covered rock. I looked at her and was heartbroken at the thought of leaving her. She meant so much to me. And now it all might come to an end, and I would never see her again.

When she heard of our plans, she turned sad. “Where will you be? How will I find you?” she asked. We talked a long while, assuring ourselves we would be together after this was all over. We hugged and kissed until we had to leave. Then she held my hand as we walked together for the last time.

“Remember, Zosia, if you don’t see me on Monday, we were able to leave Steineck. I will never forget you,” I said. “I will always love you, Zosia.”

“Send me a note to let me know where you are,” she pleaded. I promised I would. I left and walked sadly up the hill to the office, knowing that, if we left, part of me would always belong to her.

At day’s end I thanked Stasia, Witczak, and the other kind people in the office. “If it doesn’t work out “I might be back on Monday,” I remarked casually. “But I will always be grateful to you.”

We had little to take with us. I went to the first aid room, packed my dental instruments back into my box, said good-bye to Goldstein, and returned to Papa. All night long I lay awake. I feared what Krusche might do if he saw me leaving. Yet I knew that I had to take this chance. I feared that Krusche had not yet given in to Witczak. My future in Steineck was unpredictable.

On Saturday we were awakened a half hour earlier than usual. Chaim told me that Papa’s name and mine were on the list. Since it was still dark, there was a good chance that Krusche would not detect me, I thought. As we came to the yard, Krusche, his dog, his whip, and his helpers were there. Papa and I went to the back of the line. I froze at each of Krusche’s stares in our direction. I feared that if he spotted me he would make me stay. Then what would happen to Papa? Could he survive without me? When I looked at the inmates in our line, I noticed that nearly all were Mussulmen. Chaim, no doubt, was instructed by Krusche to get rid of them, the least productive. We wondered whether we really were going to another camp. Yet I waited anxiously for the order to march. Finally Chaim shouted, asking for one more roll count. He did this often because he knew it appealed to the Kommandant.

Finally we heard “Forward march!” We were out of Krusche’s domain.

M
y heart beat heavily
when we passed Krusche at the gate. I had hoped never to see him again, and my wish was being granted. Yet I equally regretted leaving the people from Dobra, among whom we had lived all our lives. I knew that that chapter of my life was closed forever.

As the morning slowly brightened, I could see David Kot, Reb Moishe, Hershel Sztein, Josef Glicensztein, and a few others waiting to leave. Two of the SS men and some of the guards I knew, including Tadek, were at our side. Tadek told me we were going to Gutenbrunn, a camp like Steineck, but larger. This was a relief. “I will stay there with you,” Tadek added. Tadek was a decent guard, and since I had kept my word, he trusted me. “Gutenbrunn is twenty-five kilometers away, and part of the same railway project,” he said. This good news spread quickly.

It was finally day. The crowing of a rooster and the barking of a dog were the only sounds on the road as we passed a lonely farm. In front of us I saw Rachmiel, the cook, and Leibel, a jovial man who had often hauled grain for us in Dobra. I pictured the pasture near Leibel’s house. Back when I was five years old, he would grab me in fun, and to be sure I wouldn’t escape, he took my clothes away. Though I knew it was a joke, I did not like to be teased. I would beg him to give me back my clothes, and eventually he would let me go.

We reached a paved road, and walking became easier. We passed many Black Madonna statues. The sun appeared, and we knew we were going north. After we passed a sandy flat and a bare bluff, we saw a group of brick buildings. One was a small grocery. A few hungry chickens followed a farmer who was raking away the remnants of winter. Women holding half-naked youngsters appeared, silently staring at us. The villages in this region were all similar, indistinct places, nameless blurs along the road. But one farmer greeted us with “Heil Hitler!”

“Heil Hitler!” the SS men and some of the guards returned the salute. “Heil Hitler!” a passing bicyclist chimed in. All these “Heil Hitlers” had a bitter ring in our ears.

Outside the village were windmills. Further on we came to a dam, and beyond it were several barracks that housed Polish women. The barracks were unfenced. These people did not live as pariahs.

A few kilometers beyond, the SS men led us off the road for a rest. Later, at the next fork in the road, we turned right. Just ahead were some heavy cement buildings with a fortlike tower in the center. Coming closer, we saw four huge buildings set in a square, with a gate and tower in front, typical of the traditional German Junkers’ and Polish counts’ farm estates. These people ruled the farming industry in Poland, and the peasants held them in reverence.